The Schools of Thought of Urban Ecology (846 Words)

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The Schools of Thought of Urban Ecology!

Existing literatures and empirical findings of urban ecology reveal that the interest in urban ecological affairs has become so widespread and strident in the last few years that a responsible and relevant treatment of ecological feature is more difficult now. The chaos out of the current protest and indecision suggests that ecological units are either vague conceptions or have become so instrumental that biological analysis is incapable of capturing the reality of the modern city and its harrowed residents. Boskoff (1970) mentioned several reasons for studying the ecological organization of urban communities:

i. The sheer complexity of urban activities and social organizations demands orderly attempts to simplify the overwhelming mass of facts in terms of economic, familial and spatial location.

ii. Ecological analysis of urban communities provides a realistic approach to the universal human problems of devising creative accommodations between a variety of socio-cultural needs and a more or less differential physical environment.

iii. Ecological analysis likewise depicts an extensive division of labour among groups in complex communities in graphic form which supplements and perhaps deepens our understanding of the nature and functioning of numerous specialized groups.

iv. Ecological analysis supplied clues to the nature and problems of social organiza­tion in the community.

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Early ecologists defined ecology either in terms of impersonal competition or socio- environmental relations. Various schools have emerged in the field of urban ecology who interpreted ecological philosophy in different tunes and dimensions.

Traditional materials interpreted ecology as the investigation of the impersonal competition that determines mans symbiotic adaptation to space. Mckenzie (1931) stated that ecologists examine ‘the relations of man to man’ in order to determine the ‘nexus of substance’ and spatial locations. C. A. Dawson (1929) perceived ecology as the distribution of human beings and their institutions over space and time. J. W. Bews (1931) interpreted ecology as the interaction between man and environment wherein man influences the environment and in turn is affected by the environments. James A. Quinn (1950) stated that ecology is the study of relations between man and environment.

Though materialists illustrated a set of biotic propositions which influence the social conditions, still they did not deny the relevance of culture. Park (1952) stated competition and the freedom of the individual is limited on every level above the biotic by custom and consensus and the cultural superstructure imposes itself as an instrument of direction and control upon the biotic superstructures. Amos H. Hawley, Otis Duncan, Leo E Schnore, Jack Gobs Walter Martine and other neo-classical materialists gave emphasis on the technological, demographic and environmental conditions which according to them would determine the various forms of urban organizations. Amos H. Hawley (1950) defined ecology as the study of ‘man’s adaptation to physical space’ through the ‘morphology of collective life’ that he conceptualized as the community. He recognized the study of the community as the environment in which human ecological processes were seen to operate.

According to Hawley (1950), the task of the ecologists should be to describe population aggregate; to analyse the community structure; to discern the effects of internal and external change upon the organization of the human aggregate, Otis Duncan and Leo Schnore (1955) interpreted ecology as a study of interaction prevailing among environment, technology, population and social organization. All the aspects stated are the indicators or morphology of collective life.

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The voluntaristic approach began with the theory of Milla Aissa Alihan (1938). She criticized traditional materialism and gave emphasis on the sociological implications in the context of ecological study. Walter Firey (1947) in his Land Use in Central Boston stated that ecological study seeks to explain ‘the territorial arrangements that social activities assume’ in man’s adaptation to space. William Form also demanded complete abandonment of materialism and was in favour of the social structure approach.

In this context, he mentioned the patterning of human activities which he has categorized under four types of ‘Social Congeries’ in regulating the land market in modern urban centres: real estate and building business; large indus­tries, business and utilities; individual house-owners and small consumers of land and local government agencies.

Form stated the inter-relations between social congeries and land use. Christen T. Jonassen (1954) in his study ‘Cultural variables in the Ecology of an Ethnic Group’ argued, ‘men tend to distribute themselves within an area so as to achieve the greatest efficiency in realizing the values they hold most dear.’ Thus, it is clear from the approach of voluntarists that social structure and value perspective are the important ingredients of human ecology.

Cultural ecologists analysed human behaviour in its cul­tural form. Firey (1947) stated that the character of space and the makeup of social systems are of cultural origin. The most recent attempt to combine convenience and sociological distinctiveness in ecological units is called Social Area Analysis which the followers of Chicago School (Shevky and Williams 1949; Shevky and Bell 1955; Anderson and Egeland 1961; Berry and Ress 1969; Arsdol et al. 1958) derived from three constructs called ‘social rank’ (economic status), ‘urbanization (family status) and ‘segregation (ethnic status).